War of the Whales by Joshua Horwitz

Author:Joshua Horwitz [Horwitz, Joshua]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781451645019
Amazon: 1451645015
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2014-07-01T16:00:00+00:00

* “Orca” and “killer whale” are interchangeable and correct names for the whale species Orcinus orca.

19

A Call to Conscience

DAY 35: APRIL 19, 2000

Smugglers Cove, San Juan Island, Washington

Spending a few days on the water with the orcas was tonic for Balcomb. But by the third night alone in his house above the cove, he began to feel isolated and anxious. He kept trying to imagine what was going on back east at Woods Hole, at Fisheries, and at ONR. Ever since he’ d handed over the heads to Darlene Ketten, he had a queasy feeling he couldn’t shake.

Then his friend Jim Mead at the Smithsonian emailed to say that the necropsy had gone forward at Woods Hole without him, with just Ketten and Ruth Ewing attending. Balcomb didn’t have the heart to share the news with Diane, who was 4,000 miles away on Abaco welcoming a new group of Earthwatch volunteers.

That evening, Balcomb sat out on the deck eating some leftover lunch that passed for dinner, watching the last light fade on the cove. The underwater hydrophones were hooked up to the deck-mounted speakers, so he could hear the chatter of J Pod moving out toward Eagle Point. When the phone rang, he hoped it was Diane.

It was Michael Jasny from NRDC, calling to invite him to a press conference in Washington, DC, in a couple of weeks. It was being hosted by the Animal Welfare Institute to publicize the Bahamas strandings. Joel Reynolds would be there from NRDC, and Naomi Rose from the Humane Society. They wanted Ken to come talk about what he had witnessed and screen whatever video his team had recorded.

Balcomb told him thanks for asking, but he was tied up with work in Abaco and here on San Juan Island.

“You know,” said Jasny, “Ben White is flying in for the press conference.”

“I’m sure he is. Ben never met a press event he didn’t love.”

“Maybe you two could come together.”

“I’ll think about it,” was all Balcomb said.

Ben White lived down the road from Balcomb on San Juan Island. He was a no-holds-barred eco-warrior, a one-man band of environmental and animal rights activism. Balcomb liked Ben. Everyone did. He was smart, bighearted, and an effective instigator of protests that got press attention. Rarest of all in the world of animal rights, Ben had a sense of humor.

Part prankster, part hard-core ideologue, White had perfected the stagecraft of guerilla street theater. He understood that if you wanted to protect the environment or animals, you had to give the media something to lead the six o’clock news. When he joined the campesinos’ “peasant protest” against a porpoise hunt in Cancun, Mexico, he brought along 350 handmade dolphin costumes to make sure that Mexican television covered the event. And when he dressed hundreds of demonstrators in full turtle regalia to protest the World Trade Organization’s policy on turtle catches, papers around the world ran front-page photos. Humor was his favored tactic, but for White, having skin in the game was more than a figure of speech.

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